I tested out the Polkadot Products Devnet last night and want to provide some feedback.
Testing Context: I have worked in a CIO role in the past, have been building software for 29 years. I’m focused on fast iteration and doing as much as possible through Claude without looking at the code.
I will be splitting this into what I like, then feedback on UX and DevX.
First of all
A big congrats to the whole team at Parity. This has been a huge effort over many years and to the educated eye it shows. Making all of these components work together is a huge leap.
And the result is that for the first time ever it feels like Web3 is becoming a reality.
What I like
- The host + primitives model. It’s a huge strength to wrap it all up for a developer so they dont have to worry about app deployment. The documentation is converging towards describing primitives (cash, messaging, identity…)
- The whole model works very well “alongside” EVM, which helps if you are coming from the EVM world and are new to those concepts.
- App setup is good. App teases with things to explore and “Polkadot Prizes” creates a nice tutorial that this crypto app actually has chat that is worthwhile (images and)
- The system around the contracts registry, app discovery through browse.dot to bind it all together is smart
- Feedback app and POS app.
- DotNS registration and app deploy loop is lovely
- Thank you to @erin for helping me figure stuff out during the livestream
Issues (sorted by annoyance)
1. I used up my storage allowance and did not see a resolution path
“No allowance set for account”
My testing session was going on for ~4 hours and at the end I just had failing transactions and the system told me my storage allowance for my personal account aliceundbob.01 is used up.
So my guess is if I have not done anything extraordinary that users will be very limited in their testing of the Products Devnet (which should rather have generous quotas)
I did not have any guidance or understanding of how I can resolve the situation and basically got blocked on using the system any further.
There is also no UI that shows me my allowance.
2. I don’t have proper orientation around how to use storage
My first impression when learning about deploying my app on bulletin chain is that my app will expire in 14 days and just disappear forever. Is it true? Will it be pinned? What do I need to do? Do I really need cron job to renew this?
I was building a guestbook and tried to figure out where to store data. “Should I use Bulletin Chain or smart contracts?”
The informed guidance is to use smart contracts as little as possible and defer to bulletin chain or if possible statement store. But this guidance is not properly written down. Storage is one of the most important issues for a developer so this is a fairly big issue. I was stressing out (even though it was just devnet) over what is the proper way.
PCF docs dont guide on this at all. Polkadot docs just have separate articles but no unified introduction.
3. Docs
- There are two relevant documentation sites and they dont really acknowledge each other. You are supposed to get started at the PCF docs and Polkadot Developer Docs, the separation I believe is troublesome and should be dissolved. Or at least mention the other docs where approprirate so that I know I can look there too.
- on hosting docs at PCF: I understand pushing this onto the PCF legally, but a docs page targeted at devs seems really off-“target group” to put onto PCF domain, a better idea might be to just host it on-chain then under docs.dot or sth
- learning how to install the apps is currently only possible on Twitter, not even the PCF docs (“Getting started” makes no mentions of the apps)
- There is no way for me to learn that the Devnet exists if I haven’t been following Twitter. polkadot.com is silent on this (btw can we acknowledge that it is a crime against web3 to switch from a .network to a .com tld?)
4. Signing/Approving
Major:
- There is way too much stuff to approve. Oftentimes it feels like I have to hit approve on the browser and in the phone 5 times to first time and 3 times every consecutive time i do an action.
- The browser waits for a tx to be approved from the phone but doesnt tell me that I need to sign on the phone. The phone didnt give me a notification. The first hour I was just thinking the txs time out while trying to get on-chain and the devnet is broken
- When opening certain apps, I am presented with 4 consecutive modals to approve something. Why not put it into one modal?
- “Sign and submit on-chain transactions on your behalf” is a very disturbing approval request if I am not given context. It reads like I am giving the app permission to just do ANYTHING with my wallet.
- I am asked to sign a tx and am presented with raw call data. I thought we had that problem solved by 2021?
Minor:
- I don’t know when the next game happens and the app doesn’t tell me
- There are no interesting apps deployed if I just want to try out the Polkadot Products Devnet as a random person (I might get the impression its still not very developed)
- Disappearing top bar needs to get learned. It just disappears and if I dont pay attention I might not even recognize that it was there after all
- clicking outside of a modal makes it disappear and I dont know what decision I just made (decline?) and I don’t understand the consequences of this misclick
5. smoldot failed to sync me and I had to go to a trusted provider
Not a big issue atm, but it is very off-brand if you are so confident to go smoldot by default and then it just doesnt work on my off-the-shelf Windows/Chrome setup.
6. Authorizing state is a new concept for most devs and needs better explaining
It was fairly straightforward the the docs are already very plain about it, but I still had to read it 3 time. I think refining this a bit more could help.
7. At last, a suggestion: Engage with the Community
The Products Devnet would be an opportunity to get into a conversation with the people that actually make the effort of a) installed the app and trying it out b) building/deploying an app. Just having a social app there that allows the ones who made it inside the devnet to engage with each other would already go a long way. (I tried to build this with the guestbook but got locked out of the system through my storage allowance)
It has been a long-standing tradition at Parity to draw a line between developers inside and outside of Parity and to let outsiders feel that they are outsiders.
e.g. just the phrasing of “third party” is the latest iteration of showing disregard for people building on Polkadot; because they might be a third party to Parity, or a third party to Hub/People/Bulletin (essentially Parity), but do you want to signal to people building on Polkadot that they are “third party” to Polkadot? I don’t think so. But at the moment this signalling comes through occasionally.
It is time to break with the tradition of othering non-Parity devs. Polkadot is no longer in the position to be seen as avantgarde where incoming people have to try to win appreciation. You might still have great technology, but the options for developers to build in Web3 have been growing steadily over the past years (inb4 “but it’s not real Web3” no one cares). If you seriously want devs to build Products, you have to engage them actively and eye to eye. “Build it and they will come” has long been disproven. You have great technology, but it is not enough to let everyone know that they should come and try it out. You need to walk towards them, give them the opportunity to enter conversations and build cool shit together with them.
You have built an exceptional tech stack and this is an unprecedented opportunity to free humanity out of it’s stupid self inflicted slavery. Please let’s not blow it on technocratism.
Social apps that invite social behavior on devnet would be great start towards creating a community of builders.
I hope this helps!
PS: If someone can help me fix my storage allowance I’m happy to publish my Cypherpunk version of 4chan
Will fix it.